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Because MacMule

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A little over a month ago I attended the Jamf Nation User Conference 2013 (READ: JNUC) in Minneapolis, this was the 1st multi-day conference I’ve attended & the 1st time i’ve flown solo. This also led to somewhat of a watershed moment for me.

The dates for the JNUC meant I was flying out 9 years to the day that I had a serious Motorbike accident that nearly took my life & have lead to a permanent disability. Before that event, I was only doing 1st Line Helpdesk Mac support, wasn’t married to my lovely wife & didn’t have the two awesome kids we have. So there have been some big changes over the past 9 years!

Being one of the few (not as few as I thought it’s turning out!) Mac Admins in the UK I have always relied on blogs, mailing lists or forums to pick peoples brains to assist me (as well as chewing the ear off of the odd sympathetic colleague). The one resource that has constantly bore fruit is the JAMF Nation.

I 1st started using JAMF Nation around 5 years ago, at that time I couldn’t script a line & if it wasn’t for members of JAMF Nation I still wouldn’t be able to.

The helpful responses & experience of collaborating with other Mac Admins on the JAMF Nation as well as, MacEnterprise List & at the beginning AFP548 Forums lead me to contribute more, & to create this blog to return the favour.

So why am I telling you this? (oh & thanks for reading btw!). Well, the 1st day of the conference I had an email exchange with Zach of JAMF asking me to sit near the front.

Panic set it, the response was “Sure” but in my head was an octave or 2 higher!

After getting my 1st lift in an F150 we arrived at the conference in the nick of time for the Keynote (thanks Allen & Brian). Watch it below in full, or from 40 – 45 mins for the pertinent bit.

That’s it, right there.. The 6ft tall guy with a limp being awarded the jacket from Zach. The response from the fellow community members over the next few days accumulated into the aforementioned watershed moment on the flight home.

Couple that with this blog getting 100k views in just over 3 years (not sure if that’s good by WordPress standards, but certainly something for me) & people in the community (incl. JAMF Staff) thanking me for this blog & mentioning that they use one of my scripts day-to-day has made me realise, i’m doing OK & have given back to the people that have given me so much.

What’s next? Well this blog is now no longer hosted on WordPress but on BlueHost, this has allowed me to customise the CSS (such as column width) as well as add plugins such as the contact page & the GitHub content you’ll see throughout that should make things more readable.

Over 2014 I’m hoping to post more, as the Mac Admin community is growing there are a few whom has started out the same as me that I hope will appreciate some of my future posts. There are also a few others that I may approach asking if they will write here too.

Again that to the guys at JAMF for an awesome product, community & conference. I had the pleasure of bumping into a couple of JAMFers last week in London & as always it was fun. Those whom i’ve bantered with on the interwebs over the past few years & finally met & JNUC & since, again thanks.. you’ve helped me, I hope i’ve helped you & tomorrow let’s do it again. To the new friends made, hello & I hope we stay in touch for a long time!

Well done Big man. It is so glad to see all my training and input into your tech knowledge is being recognised – I almost feel that this is like my child growing up and leaving the nest (wipe tear away…). Well done mate.